 You know, for me, that Alexa Fimea was massive in terms of sort of putting a blocker on my ability to feel and to connect events with emotions and to do all of that things. And you know, when I was younger, I used to think I had multiple personalities. You know, my outward, you know, I'd notice now and again and sort of bring myself back and sort of observe myself, you know, for information now it's it's different emotional states. But I thought I was having different personalities. And I labeled them with different colors. I was like, yeah, I'm feeling a bit red today, which will be so I was just angry. But I thought that just because my the way that I was talking and the way that I was behaving and the things that I was thinking about were so different, I was like, I can't be the same person. Like, that's that disconnect was just crazy. And me not knowing much about autism, much about Alexa Fimea, I was trying to do all these really crazy roundabout ways of understanding my environment from that sort of logical understanding. It was a funny time. Let's say that at least you were recognizing that you did feel differently. Sometimes one of the barriers for people, especially in the case of Alexa Fimea is, I'm trying to check in with how I feel and I actually have no idea. For me, I'm sometimes able to do that. It's kind of weird. I did a video on what I called it emotional damping, because I've got like spring damping, not equations, well, equations as well, but like the graphs and things from my mechanical engineering days and like, well, my damping coefficient on my emotions is really high. Anyway, so what basically what that means, it's really interesting to say because a lot of the ways that I try and explain Alexa Fimea to people who don't understand it, you know, like, obviously, like, it's really useful in interpersonal relationships with like romantic partners and things of that nature. Like, for me, there's, I try and describe it like most people can tell when they're 20% angry or something, they can sort of feel it. They know that it's there. They can see it in their behavior. Whereas for me, it might be like 60, 70, 80% angry. And by the time that it gets to that point, it's overwhelming. It hits me all at once. I have a shutdown, I have a meltdown, I go off in a huff and have a party about it. But up until that point, it's really just a feeling that something's not really good and my body feels a bit weird. Good day, viewers and listeners. Apologies for my very rude interruption to our regularly scheduled broadcast. I just want to remind you that if you have enjoyed the podcast thus far, please make sure to rate, subscribe, like, comment and share. All of these actions are pretty much the lifeblood of a small independent creator like myself. And it will help me get most of my work, more of my work to people who really need it. If you want to stay up to date with my life, get behind the scenes content, check out my daily blogs, head over to the Instagram at Thomas Henley UK. You'll find a link to that down in the description, alongside my range of neurodiversity clothing just like this strong, powerful autistic hoodie. I love so much. And my website, of course, where you can find a contact, email to book me for one to one orders and coaching, interviews, workplace training and speaking. So thank you very much for listening to this very annoying self advert. And I hope you enjoy the rest of the show. Do you have that experience? I don't know if you have the experience sometimes of not realizing until later. So something will happen. And there'll be a bit of a delay. And it's almost like all of the sort of appropriate emotions, all of the things that I could have felt immediately. I feel nothing for the moment. And then a little bit later, it might be five minutes, it might be a day, it might be a year. Suddenly they all hit me later on. And that is fantastically useful for dealing with crisis situations. Because I don't get overwhelmed. No, no, no, it's actually really useful. Because when something big happens, then I can stay focused, and I can do what I need to do, and I can make good decisions. And then it's not till later that all of the emotions come up and it gets overwhelming. Some people get scared or feel unsafe or something, and they just lose their ability to think clearly. Whereas for me, I can usually keep my ability to stay conscious and think clearly a lot longer than most people. The downside is that it makes it harder to react instantly and emotionally and in an appropriate kind of way. Which in relationships, my dad's died, and you're like, Yeah, exactly. Whereas in relationships, people need you to respond in the first quarter of a second for them to feel like you care, for example. So it can come up as a challenge in relationships. Honestly, I've never thought about the crisis situation. I'd say there's been a few times in the past where that's been the case. I get a bit zoned out, but I'm fixed on cognitively understanding what's going on and trying to get a solution. And then as you said, I'll have a shower or something like a few hours later after this event, I'll just be like, Oh my God, this is intense. And breaking down, I'm going to cry. I think as well, it can be hard interpersonally when it comes to things like arguments as well. Because any situation where emotions are heightened for one person or for both parties, being able to really understand how that person's words or that person's emotions make you feel, and then respond to that, it's quite important to do that. But a lot of the time, it's not something that I can personally do. So I need like an hour or two, or I need like a couple of days where I can go back, I can really think about it, write down my thoughts, try and think about how I felt in that moment. Yeah, definitely like, interpersonally, especially in sort of romantic relationships, it can be hard to navigate, especially when you don't know that it's there, and that it's there is something that not everyone experiences, and they don't understand it, or they choose to ignore it. And part of the goal of emotional intelligence training is to sort of reduce that lag time, so that you're having a conversation, and someone says something that you find inappropriate or offensive, or something, or they, you know, and instead of saying okay, and going along with it, and then the next day or the next week going, hang on a minute, I wasn't really happy there, you can say something in the moment and say, actually, how I feel at the moment is I would prefer not to go out to dinner right now. I actually am a bit tired. I'm going to go home. Wow. And instead of, it just helps making choices in the moment. It helps with relationships in terms of standing up for your own boundaries of what you are happy and not happy with. And also, it means that the other person gets instant feedback as to whether something, whether you find something good or bad. Because if I tell someone, hey, remember that thing you said last week, well, I felt this way about it. What are you talking about? It's a little bit, it's a little bit hard to train you as my friend or my partner or something else, right? It's a little bit hard to train them if you're giving them feedback a week after the event. Whereas if they do something or say something, and you're like, oh, that's the thing. Can you please not do that or say that? Because it has this effect on me. So I suppose then they get the anxiety as well. They're like, all right, they said they're okay. They always do this, but they're not. And they're going to be waiting a week or so and they're going to come back with this long paragraph of text. And, oh, Jesus Christ. Exactly. And if you can say you're not okay when you're not okay, that actually builds a huge amount of trust in relationships. Because it means someone can ask me and they can trust my answer. When I say yes, they can trust that I mean yes. And when I say no, they can trust that I have a good reason and that I actually mean no as well. So yeah, but it all comes down to training how to do that properly in the moment in the relationship. And that's what a lot of people have trouble with.